So far the weather forecast had been pretty accurate. And indeed we awoke to find we were traveling in snow flurries as predicted by the weather forecast. For breakfast I had a 79c (all you can drink) coffee (so good) and a 99c processed bacon and egg muffin (hmmm). America has the cheap hookups! Driving through central Montana was interesting. The road had not been graded so we treaded carefully on the snowy slushy road. The trip included more prairies and rather flat straight highway. We pulled over briefly to photograph a windmill farm. At the border to my dismay, I [View Full Entry]

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It was an early start from Denver. We were on the road at 7:15am with a thousand km’s of driving stretching ahead of us that day. And drive we did out of Colorado into Wyoming. Well I drove the whole 950km’s to Billings. It took us 11 hours to get there and over two tanks of gas. We were pushing the old corolla hard and trying to keep at 75mph (120 km/h) considering the route was a straight flat twin lane highway. Due to pushing the car hard with two bikes creating drag, we also encountered 100km/h winds as we drove [View Full Entry]

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Denver was the most amount of time we had spent in anywhere during the trip. It was a chance to kick back and relax from all the recent driving around. We stayed the whole time with an American family that Nomes has met at the camp in Canada where she had worked. The first day there we went to Colorado springs by invite and walked around the garden of the gods, looking at the rock formations. Something to do! Next day Nomes went up pikes peak while I chilled out back home. So during our stay we ended up riding some [View Full Entry]

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I had been iching to get some mountain biking in and since Moab was known as the mountainbiking mecca of the USA it had been my main motivation to come to this place. So I got some repairs done to my bike and headed out to ride the famous slickrock tracks, while Naomi did a spot of hiking in Archers national park. The ride I did today was up to the top of a rock mountain. The road was a bumpy and sandy 4x4 road. I allowed 3 4x4’s to go ahead of me but quickly overtook them while I bumped [View Full Entry]

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The day started frosty. No snow but a thick frost due to the negative temperatures. Lucky we were in a nice motel unit with central heating. We drove to Bryce Canyon and marveled at the amputheature, full of many of rock towers littering the valley. Bryce has its own beauty but I don’t think it’s as spectacular as Zion or Yosemite, or maybe I am getting used to all this dramatic landscape. We drove over to capital reef national park and took the scenic drive which featured rocks which had been given names of the objects that they looked like. Then [View Full Entry]

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Today we drove 4 hours from Zion down to the north rim of the grand canyon. It’s a decent drive to get to either north or south rim. We drove through a forest which turned into charred trees. We later learned that a fire that summer had burnt thousands of hectares of forest in grand canyon national park. The canyon is impressive even if it was not what I expected. It’s probably at least a couple of km’s deep from the rim to the base. The hazy air which tainted the view was apparently caused by a nearby factory, so the [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Vegas was almost a relief. We headed out on the concrete highway on route to the north rim of the grand canyon. After lengthy consultation we decided to go to Zion national park instead for the night. We arrived with enough time to check it out a bit. We drove up the scenic road and hiked to the upper pools and also viewed the weeping wall. Zion was much more spectacular that I first imagined, I thought it might be much like Yosemite, but the rock formations were different, trees were different also. Again we ran out of daylight to [View Full Entry]

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My first impression of this place is possibly the same as every other tourist who visits here for the first time. WOW. Vegas really turns itself on for the tourists. The strip is where all the big hotels are located dotted along each side of the boulevard. They are all vying with each other for who has the most glitzy and glamorous hotel and casino. To achieve this many of them have free shows, for example circus circus has free live circus performer shows every half an hour in its casino. Bellagio has a volcano in its water fountain, and the [View Full Entry]

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Another day in the desert dawned hot. We walked through golden canyon admiring the rock formations around us. Not so long ago a paved road had been built in the canyon but since flash floods come every year the rock below the road washed out destroying it. More investigation led us to such things as a natural bridge, droving around artist’s drive which boasts different coloured rocks, walked out on the salt flats in badwater which is 86m below sea level. Death Valley is an incredible place (did I say that already?) The intelligence in the processes that create the canyons, [View Full Entry]

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We had our first look at death valley in the morning! It really is an amazing place for a desert. Canyons have been formed from the ice age and further shaped by flash flooding. There are multiple rock formations out here, limestone, marble, sand, salt, granite and many different forms of animal life. After walking through “mosaic” canyon we took a tour at Scotty’s castle. The irony in this is that this 2 million dollar castle was built pretty well in the middle of nowhere by a wealthy millionaire who was duping into the desert by a conman (Scotty) who clamed [View Full Entry]

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